Toshiba joins Japan’s solar sprint with 32-MW SunPower deal

Major electronics maker Toshiba is getting serious about the rooftop solar game, with plans to resell highly-efficient photovoltaic panels made by Bay Area-based SunPower. The two companies just struck a supply deal for 32 megawatts worth of panels in 2010 — enough to power as many as 32,000 homes.
The contract is significant for two reasons. Not only is it expanding SunPower’s global footprint and broadening its portfolio of projects, it also signals increased interest in solar energy in Japan, where Toshiba hopes to launch its residential solar business on April 1. Delivering technology made by third-party vendors, it aims to corner 10 percent of the domestic market by 2013.
With the country’s government setting ambitious quotas for renewable energy production and establishing a generous feed-in-tariff and subsidies for households installing solar systems, the market is expected to explode in the next several years.
Toshiba’s decision to go with SunPower makes a lot of sense in context. The public company is one of the most formidable makers of rooftop solar systems in the U.S., to be sure, but it’s really set apart from its competitors by the efficiency of its products. The company has achieved efficiency rates as high as 22 percent (meaning 22 percent of the light captured is actually turned into electricity). Average efficiences for other photovoltaic panels hover between 9 to 11 percent.
Japan isn’t exactly well-suited for solar. There is limited empty, flat roof space, and the sun doesn’t shine as intensely as it does in places like Arizona and Latin America. For these reasons, super high-efficiency panels are an obvious choice, even if they are more expensive than some other offerings.
As Toshiba and Japan ready themselves for major solar growth, SunPower itself has been expanding in leaps and bounds. It is planning to open big new manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Europe and Malaysia this year. But more telling is that it more than doubled its photovoltaic cell and panel production between 2008 and 2009. Today, it churns out more than 400 megawatts of equipment a year.
Toshiba isn’t the only Japanese company anticipating a boost. Mitsubishi Electric and Showa Shell have also announced that they will be accelerating solar panel production. Showa, in particular, has been vocal about becoming the world’s top distributor of thin-film solar — a direct challenge to the U.S.’s First Solar, currently the biggest company in the world. To reach this goal, it is converting a former Hitachi television factor into a massive solar plant capable of producing 900 megawatts worth of solar film every year. The company will sell its photovoltaics under the new brand Solar Frontier.
Mitsubishi hasn’t been quite as bold, but did just finish construction on a 24,000 square-foot solar panel plant in northern Japan, set up to produce 600 megawatts worth of solar cells by the year 2012. Right now its capacity is 220 megawatts.
Japan seems to be headed in the opposite direction of countries like Spain and Germany. The two European solar panels ran into trouble when government subsidies led to an oversupply of panels and plummeting prices. They are both scaling back financial support for solar companies to elevate prices and keep the industry healthy. The Japanese government acknowledged this hurdle, but says that long-term market potential outweights near-term price fluctuations.
Companies: First Solar, Mitsubishi Electric, Showa Shell, SunPower, Toshiba